Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• GRS EC 722: Topics in Economic Development 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Empirical analysis of the economic development process, addressing both proximate causes (capital, labor, human capital investments, credit and insurance market failures, and trade flows) and fundamental causes (institutional factors, conflict, and state capacity), integrated with training in empirical methods.
• GRS EC 731: Market Organization and Public Policy
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 703; or consent of instructor.
  Analytical foundations of public policy toward market organization. Theoretical emphasis on imperfect competition, the structure of markets, and the strategic behavior of firms and consumers. Implications for policy in developed and less-developed countries.
• GRS EC 732: Topics in Industrial Organization
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Advanced topics in research in industrial organization, often emphasizing empirical applications, such as estimation of demand and estimation of strategic interactions between firms.
• GRS EC 733: Empirical Industrial Organization
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 703; or consent of instructor.
  This course studies the frontiers of research in industrial organization, and emphasizes connections between theoretical and empirical topics. Typical topics are advanced demand estimation, auctions and market design. Can be taken separately or in addition to GRS EC 731 and EC 732.
• GRS EC 741: Topics in Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701 and GRS EC 702; or consent of instructor.
  Advanced topics in macroeconomics and empirical macroeconomics. Topics include empirical and theoretical perspectives on the role of monetary policy in the economy, labor markets, firm dynamics, links between financial markets and macroeconomic outcomes, and causes and consequences of inequality among households.
• GRS EC 742: Applied Macroeconomics
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701 and GRS EC 702; or consent of instructor.
  Advanced topics in macroeconomics and empirical macroeconomics, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, model construction, and the quantitative evaluation of business cycles and growth.
• GRS EC 744: Economic Dynamics
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Introduces the theory and application of dynamicoptimization and equilibrium analysis, with emphasis on computational methods and techniques. Covers discrete and continuous time models in both deterministic and stochastic environments.
• GRS EC 745: Macroeconomics and Financial Markets
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 704; or consent of instructor.
  Topics and approaches combine macroeconomics and finance, with an emphasis on developing and testing theories that involve linkages between financial markets and the macro economy.
• GRS EC 752: Topics in Labor Economics 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  In addition to GRS EC 751, this course prepares students to do research in labor economics. Topics include labor supply and demand, human capital, education, job search, wage determination, unemployment, immigration, family and gender, and discrimination. Sequence may be taken in either order.
• GRS EC 761: Public Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701; or consent of instructor.
  The theory of excess burden; optimal taxation; static, dynamic, and interegional tax incidence; public goods; externalities; corporate taxation; dynamic fiscal policy; and cost-benefit analysis. Extensive use of calculus.
• GRS EC 762: Topics in Applied Public Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701; or consent of instructor.
  Theory and practice of benefit-cost analysis and other similar techniques for evaluating investment projects. Emphasis on sources of divergence between public and private investment decisions through the estimation of shadow prices in a context of market distortions and disequilibrium. Case studies applying theoretical approach.
• GRS EC 764: Topics in Economic History 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  First half of two-semester PhD sequence. Topics generally selected from: history of public debt, state finance, and monetary policy; the Industrial Revolution; urbanization; transportation and trade; institutions and long-run performance; the Great Depression.
• GRS EC 765: Topics in Economic History 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
  Second half of two-semester PhD sequence. Topics generally selected from: agricultural and environmental economic history; manufacturing; demographic change; the female labor force; labor mobility; inequality; business organization and performance.
• GRS EC 781: Health Economics 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701; or consent of instructor.
  Basic issues in the health market: risk aversion, moral hazard, adverse selection, provider payment, physician-patient interaction, health plans, managed care, imperfect and quality competition, and laboratory and field experiments. Theoretical approach complements industrial organization and GRS EC 782.
• GRS EC 782: Health Economics 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 707; or consent of instructor.
  Applies theory and econometrics to health topics, including demand and supply, imperfect information, plan-level competition, provider payment, risk adjustment, big data sets, behavioral economics, altruism and health care systems in developed and developing countries. Complements GRS EC 781.
• GRS EC 790: Topics in Economics
  Topic for Fall 2021: Writing in Communication. Intended for economics students who are writing their dissertations. Covers paper organization, essentials of abstracts and introductions, rewriting and editing, table presentations, mathematical writing and presentations at conferences and in seminars.
• GRS EC 791: International Trade
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 701; or consent of instructor.
  Theories and empirical analysis of international trade. Comparative advantage-based neoclassical theory and new trade theory. Quantitative heterogeneous firms models. Empirics of firm-level trade patterns. Multinational production and other forms of globalization: vertical specialization, outsourcing, offshoring.
• GRS EC 792: International Finance
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor (GRS EC 712 recommended).
  Theory and empirical analysis of problems in open economy macroeconomics and finance. Topics include dynamic macroeconomic models of open economies; international asset pricing; models of exchange rate determination; international risk sharing; sovereign debt and default.
• GRS EC 794: Financial Econometrics
  Graduate Prerequisites: GRS EC 712; or consent of instructor.
  Presents econometric theory and methods for the analysis of financial markets. Topics include cross section and time series properties of asset returns, parametric and nonparametric volatility measurement, implied volatility, estimation of asset pricing models, continuous time models, systemic risk, and model uncertainty.
• GRS EC 798: Global Development Capstone
  Graduate Prerequisites: at least 12 credits toward the Global Development Policy MA or the Global Development Economics MA.
  Capstone course for MA students in Global Policy and Global Development Economics. Students, working in groups, apply economic theory, econometric methods, and real-world data to conduct an interdisciplinary policy analysis comparable to those performed in governments and nonprofit agencies.